Our favourite Wally Buono moment really has very little to do with football:
It was a Sunday, one day before the Labour Day Classic in Calgary, and Buono — then the Stampeders head coach — was holding his usual media availability in his office at McMahon Stadium.
I walked into the office after most of a media group of seven or eight had filled the chairs and couches, but there, right in front of Buono’s desk, was a prime, high-back leather office chair.
It was odd that no one had taken that chair, and as my eyes stopped on it in search of a place to sit down, Buono said, "That’s Murray’s chair. We’re saving it for him."
The Murray in question was long-time Calgary Herald beat writer Murray Rauw, who had been ill and had left the beat for a couple of weeks. The questions began, and for the next half hour, the best seat in the room, Murray’s seat, sat open.
In this temporary football world where players are routinely cut loose, coaches fired, and reporters come and go all the time, here was Buono, leaving a seat open in memory of a beat writer whose job it was to critique his every coaching move.
It was, in a coach-reporter relationship we have witnessed in countless sports in countless cities, one of the most decent acts we can recall through 25 years in the business.
Buono is, if nothing else, a very decent man. You just can’t say the same thing about his record these days.
His Lions started the 2010 season 1-7, and as a result, Buono changed a myriad of things at training camp and during the preseason to avoid a similar start to 2011. But alas, B.C. drags a 1-6 record into Commonwealth Stadium on Friday night, where a loss would pretty much clinch a West Division playoff berth for the Eskimos.
"It’s always taxing on the coach when you lose," said Buono, who entered the season with an all-time best 243 wins, and should be closing in on 250 by now. But the Lions, a club everyone predicted would challenge in the West, are hapless, ranking sixth or worse in the eight-team CFL in the nine primary statistical categories.
"They’re not a 1-6 team," Eskimos coach Kavis Reed said of the Lions. "They’re 1-6 by record … but historically speaking, Wally’s teams, when they start slowly, he finds a way to get them back on track.
"I have the utmost respect for coach Buono," Reed said. "He’s the winningest coach in CFL history, he’s a very good man. There is nothing but respect for coach Buono and what he has accomplished."
When you’re a football coach however, that respect is all tied to your record. Keep losing, and the whispers will begin that even the great Wally Buono is losing touch with the game.
Veteran receiver Paris Jackson has zero catches for zero yards this season and can see the writing on the wall. He’s squirming now, expecting he may be cut — and not receive 100 per cent of his 2011 salary — before the Lions’ ninth game on Sept. 2.
"To be as loyal as I’ve been to this team," Jackson told the Vancouver Sun, "to not have gone to the media, to come here and do my work without complaining… For him (Buono) to cut me would be a slap in the face."
They didn’t use to refer to coach Buono as "him," but the way these Lions are playing football, they look very much like a group on whom Buono’s message is increasingly getting lost.
Geroy Simon, however, says his coach has been as straight-up as ever.
"Whether you win or lose, Wally’s going to treat you like a man," Simon said. "He’s always going to tell you his expectations of you, and if you can’t do that, then he has to think about other things. But he’s consistent."
It is odd to see a Buono team with no quarterbacking, considering the many fine pivots who have been through his offence.
Ex-Lion Buck Pierce looks better in Winnipeg than current starter Travis Lulay does in Vancouver, and it’s difficult to say whether this offence is anywhere near finding its groove nearly halfway through the CFL season.
"It’s as close and as far away as it appears," Buono admits. "You look at the first half of last week’s game (a 30-17 loss to Winnipeg), and you would think we were really close to turning it around. Then you look at the second half, and that’s the furthest thought from anybody’s mind."
Even further from anyone’s mind is the thought that a team could engineer consecutive 1-7 starts to the season, and the head coach’s job could be safe.
But, this isn’t just any head coach. We’re thinking, win or lose Friday, Buono’s chair is safe for a while.
